Gopal Krishna Gokhale

Gopal Krishna Gokhale CIE 160 pronunciation 160 was one of the social and political leaders during the Indian Independence Movement against the British Empire in India. Gokhale was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and founder of the Servants of India Society. Through the Society as well as the Congress and other legislative bodies he served in, Gokhale campaigned for Indian selfrule and also social reform. He was the leader of the moderate faction of the Congress party that advocated reforms by working with existing government institutions.

Gopal Krishna Gokhale was born onMay 1866 in Kothluk village of Guhagar taluka in Ratnagiri district, in presentday Maharashtra in a Chitpavan Brahmin Family. Despite being relatively poor, his family members ensured that Gokhale received an English education, which would place Gokhale in a position to obtain employment as a clerk or minor official in the British Raj. Being one of the first generations of Indians to receive a university education, Gokhale graduated from Elphinstone College in 1884. Gokhales education tremendously influenced the course of his future career in addition to learning English, he was exposed to western political thought and became a great admirer of theorists such as John Stuart Mill and Edmund Burke. Although he would come to criticise unhesitatingly many aspects of the English colonial regime, the respect for English political theory and institutions that Gokhale acquired in his college years would remain with him for the rest of his life.

Source: Wikipedia